West Brom technical director Luke Dowling has confirmed that the club are talking to four candidates about the vacant manager post.
Interim boss James Shan – who took over following Darren Moore’s departure – left after failing to guide the Baggies past Aston Villa into the play-off final.
Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, who claim that former Brighton boss Chris Hughton and Lincoln City manager Danny Cowley are on the shortlist, Dowling said he hopes to have the interview process wrapped up soon.
“We’ve narrowed it down to four,” the technical director said. “We won’t get to squeeze all four in next week but in the next two weeks, we’d like to speak to all of them.
“We’ll gather our thoughts this end to see who we go back to. We’ll whittle it down to two and decide off the back of that. It could have started the morning after the Villa (play-off) game, but we wanted to take this week to gather our thoughts.
“It’s getting round to the people we want to speak to, having the right amount of time with those people and speak to them about how we see the running of the club in the next two to three seasons.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll be announcing our new head coach in two weeks because it might take a little longer with complications if someone was in work. But in the next couple of weeks we will have spoken to them all.”
OPINION
The sooner the search for a new West Brom boss is over, the better. In one sense, it was tough on Hughton to be sacked by Brighton earlier this week after guiding his side to Premier League safety. But if the club are aiming higher, then Hughton was obviously not the right man to take them forward next season. In another sense, Hughton’s departure is quite lucky that it has come at the time it has, because his personality – being a thoroughly nice man – suits West Brom to a T and he would be the perfect fit to take over at the Hawthornes. Cowley has proven that he is a promotion-winning manager after guiding Lincoln to successive promotions from the National League into League One. But it will be interesting to see who West Brom pick. While Hughton has done it before with Brighton in the Championship, Cowley has lower-league experience but may be the one to breathe new life into the club.